Google Spent $951 Million on Data Centers in 4Q

Google invested nearly a billion dollars in its Internet infrastructure in the last quarter of 2011, recording capital expenditures (CapEx) of $951 million. Google’s CapEx spending was about $271 million more than in the third quarter of 2011, when it invested $680 million in its infrastructure.

The increase is likely due to early work on a significant expansion of Google’s international data center network. In recent weeks the company has announced four new data center projects, including three new facilities in three markets in Asia (Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong) and a new data center in Dublin.

Here’s a look at Google’s quarter-by-quarter spending on capital expenditures.

1Q 2007: $597 million

2Q 2007: $575 million

3Q 2007: $553 million

4Q 2007: $678 million

1Q 2008: $842 million

2Q 2008: $698 million

3Q 2008: $452 million

4Q 2008:$368 million

1Q 2009: $263 million

2Q 2009: $139 million

3Q 2009: $186 million

4Q2009: $221 million

1Q2010: $239 million

2Q2010: $476 million

3Q2010: $757 million

4Q2010: $2.55 Billion

1Q2011: $890 million

2Q2011: $917 million

3Q2011: $680 million

4Q2011: $951 million

A capital expenditure is an investment in a long-term asset, typically physical assets such as buildings or machinery. Google says the majority of its capital investments are for IT infrastructure, including data enters, servers, and networking equipment. In the past the company’s CapEx spending has closely tracked its data center construction projects, each of which requires between $200 million and $600 million in investment.

About the Author

Rich Miller is the founder and editor at large of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.

Google invested $890 million in its data center infrastructure in the first three months of 2011, the second-highest total in its history, the company said Thursday in its latest quarterly report. Read More